1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to an image forming apparatus such as a copying machine and a page printer, and particularly to a medium transporting section for transporting sheets of a print medium to a transfer section and then to a succeeding section downstream of the transfer section.
2. Description of the Related Art
Existing electrophotographic printers include, for example, laser printers and light emitting diode (LED) printers. These printers incorporate transfer rollers for transferring toner images formed in respective image forming units. The transfer rollers receive a transfer voltage from a power supply, the transfer voltage creating an electric field by which the toner images are transferred onto the print medium.
Such electrophotographic printers may suffer from a problem in that the medium is charged by the voltage applied for transferring the toner images onto the print medium. In order to neutralize the charge on the medium, some printers employ a neutralizing brush at a location downstream of the transfer sections aligned along the transport path of the medium. Japanese Patent Publication NO. 2002-091217 discloses one such electrophotographic printer.
This printer suffers from, for example, a problem in that when the print medium is transported from the transfer section to the fixing unit, the distance between the print medium and the neutralizing member may change depending on the type of print medium after transferring, possibly causing a poor neutralizing effect.